Ten industries swimming against the tide | GOOD MORNING

Last month a California-based research firm called IBISWorld released an intriguing — and rather sobering — report about businesses that are poised to go the way of Betamax.

"Dying Industries," penned by IBISWorld senior industry analyst Toon Van Beeck, takes a look at 10 businesses that aren't poised to survive in the 21st century as factors like technology and globalization assume even greater prominence in our daily lives.

The erosion of many industries, Van Beeck notes, isn't just a legacy of the global financial crisis. It's actually a matter of life cycles: Businesses, like people, experience periods of growth, maturity and decline before they're gone for good.

So what businesses are looking less like a Picasso and more like a velvet Elvis? Here are — ranked according to industry size at the end of 2010 — IBISWorld's 10 key industries that will continue to plunge into the abyss:

1. Wired telecommunications carriers: It's bad to be wired in a wireless world. The industry's revenue has declined 54.9 percent since 2000.

5. DVD, game and video rental: Netflix, online streaming, digital cable, etc., have hammered this business. Blockbuster, the industry's dominant player in 2000, is bankrupt today. There were more than 26,000 establishments in 2000. Today there are about 17,000.

6. Manufactured home dealers: Revenue has decreased 73.7 percent since 2000, in large part because of a wave of foreclosures and sinking home prices.

8. Record stores: If video killed the radio star, digital downloads — legal and illegal — killed brick-and-mortar record stores. Big-box retailers like Walmart also played a role. More than 77 percent of the nation's record stores have closed since 2000.

9. Photofinishing: Seriously, when was the last time you dropped off a roll of film to be developed? Today, most pictures go straight from your digital camera to Facebook, Flickr, Snapfish or Shutterfly. There were more than 17,000 such establishments in 2000; today, some 7,000 survive.

10. Formal wear and costume rental: Do cheaper garments mean more purchases and fewer rentals? Or do we just not dress up like we used to? There are now some 2,310 such rental establishments in the U.S. — or 28.5 percent less than a decade ago.

In the absence of new ideas, it will take more than a recovering U.S. economy (perhaps divine intervention?) to save these businesses. Van Beeck's report says that not only have these industries seen dramatic decline from 2000 to 2010, but they're forecast to erode even further through 2016, even as the nation's economic picture presumably gets better.

Alas, it's not all gloom and doom. As the report notes: "While these industries are all facing negative numbers, it does not necessarily mean that the players that operate within them are also on the brink of death."

Good news, perhaps, for those of us in the news business.

If you're trying to carve out a living in one of the other industries on this list, drop me a line and let me know what you're doing to stay viable.